FIVE MINUTES WITH
Five minutes with Utah Lee Nicole Slater talks to the Nike Master Trainer and mum of two this Mother’s Day
This Mother’s Day we wanted to celebrate the working mums who make parenting and running a business look easy. Utah Lee is a prominent figure in Hong Kong’s fitness industry, coaching and hosting a range of wellness events across the city since 2000. After the birth of her first child, Lee initially found it difficult to find her place in the fitness industry but she motivated herself to get back out there. “It’s important to stay humble and keep learning. There is always someone who is smarter than you, stronger than you and younger than you.” While fitness is a large part of Lee’s career, there’s no denying that fashion is her true calling. She opened her first retail store, House Of Style on Wellington Street in 2011 and continues to model and promote a range of fashion brands via her Instagram. “I worked
very hard to make my dreams a reality, I have no regrets and have learnt so much from these experiences,” says Lee. Balancing a fashion and fitness career alone is a lot of pressure for most people, but Lee is also a doting mother of two. “My second child was only four months old when I started the retail business. I was planning, designing, making and connecting,” she says. “Initially there was a lot of stress and late nights as I tried to balance work, family and myself.” But over the years Lee has mastered a schedule that can accommodate both business and family time, “I only allow myself to have two late nights per week and schedule family dinner twice a week along with a family day on Sunday. This keeps everything in balance.” While the pandemic caused many of Lee’s face-to-face classes to be cancelled, she
remains grateful for the extra time she got to spend with her family, “since everyone was at home all the time, we got to readjust to really ‘living’ with each other again.”
Utah’s strategies for living a good life: • Spend time with family doing something good for the world, ie. beach and mountain clean ups and attending charity events • Be active, eat relatively healthy, be positive and kind • No phones during meal times with family and friends
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